Tagged With amazon echo

Every night around 2am, the gentleman that lives above me decides to move a piece of furniture and then throw roughly 7,000 pennies at it. Or at least that’s what I’ve convinced myself he’s doing. Whatever it is it’s startling and consistently wakes me up, but isn’t momentous enough for him to have “any idea” what I’m referring to.

This week Amazon started rolling out Skype support for Amazon Echo devices. With the feature, you can both make and receive Skype voice calls using something like an Echo Dot and make video calls using Amazon’s Echo Show.

Amazon held a hardware event last night, releasing a pile of new products to drive home automation. The Echo range received a massive boost but a number of other accessories including cameras, smartplugs and even a microwave oven. And while not every product will make it to Australia - we won't be getting the microwave oven for now - there's enough in this announcement for Amazon to be declared the current leader in smart home gear.

If you've visited Amazon since it launched Down Under, you've surely seen the adverts for the Echo smart speaker range. With multiple versions to choose from, there's a lot for prospective buyers to unpack before making a purchasing decision. Here's a rundown of each model, with links to buy.

Going to the effort of setting up a smart home just so you can turn your lights on and off from your phone may not seem like the best use of your time and resources, but with the right gear and apps you can put together some routines that really will impress family, friends and occasional Airbnb guests. Here are five of our favourites.

Every Wednesday, there's a YouTube series that adds a new music video of a screaming frog saying "It is Wednesday, my dudes." Wouldn't one of these Wednesday songs make a better alarm for your Wednesday mornings than "Radar (Default)"? You can make this happen, my dudes.

Amazon has managed to make Alexa the brand people think of when it comes to digital voice assistants, but the Google Assistant is the smartest of the bunch according to a new study. With that said, they all have serious shortcomings - particularly when it comes to responding to questions - that the industry has yet to iron out.

Touchscreens have become the primary way many of us interact with the digital world, but they aren't great options for the visually impaired. Smartphones have small displays and require precise controls, and their screens shut off after a few moments of inactivity, which makes them difficult to use if your vision isn't great. In these instances, a smart speaker is probably a much more useful device.

Our smart speakers continue to get smarter over time, and one of the features recently added to the kit made by Amazon and Google is support for multi-room audio -- in other words, the option to play the same tunes in multiple rooms at once. Here's how to set it up with a group of Amazon Echos, Google Homes, or Sonos smart speakers.

Alexa Routines are a useful way to trigger a bunch of different actions with a single voice command on your Amazon Echo. Now, they're getting even better, now that you can add specific songs, podcasts and radio shows.

In the fight between Google, Amazon and Apple to take control of your home, there are some clear battle-lines being drawn. Over the last week, I've been using The Amazon Echo - a cylindrical speaker and microphone array that responds to my voice to do all sorts of interesting things. Here's my journey so far and how it fits into my quest to assemble an array for smart home devices that will make my home operate more smoothly.

Smart speakers are cool, convenient and fun to use, but when it comes to privacy, they leave a lot to be desired. If you own an Amazon Echo, a Google Home or a HomePod, there are a bunch of settings and features to tweak if you're worried about protecting your personal data.

Apple's entry into the increasingly competitive smart speaker market is here, and while the tech giant likes to claim it's focused almost entirely on the musical experience, via Apple Music, its close ties to Siri and Apple HomeKit make it tough not to compare the HomePod to similar devices produced by Google and Amazon.

The Amazon Echo is pretty great at understanding your voice out of the box, but Alexa could always use a little help. If she gets a command wrong - or even if she gets it right - open up your Alexa app to give some feedback.